Tesla packs its cars with an assortment of technological features, one of which is ‘sentry mode’.
This uses the vast array of cameras on the vehicle to capture a 360-degree video recording while the car is left unattended.
Recently, one owner used sentry mode to capture two men denting and keying his £41,000 Model 3 while it was parked. The resulting footage was uploaded to YouTube and has gone viral with thousands circulating the footage in an effort to find the culprits.
Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with ‘Merica’, one of the men appears to be admiring the Dodge Ram truck parked next to the Tesla. Then, for no apparent reason, he pulls keys from his pocket and scrapes them all along the side of the expensive electric vehicle.
Later, they return and give the Tesla a second round of scratches and get into the truck, slamming its door into the side of the Tesla.
The video was uploaded to YouTube yesterday and has generated over 450,000 views.
The highest voted comment underneath the video sums up the sentiment perfectly: ‘Really hope this goes viral and you catch these clowns. Forget about Tesla vs whatever…no car owner should have this happen to them.’
If this is the kind of behaviour that people seem happy to engage in, perhaps Sentry Mode will stand as one of Tesla’s best features yet.
‘When enabled, Sentry Mode enters a “Standby” state, like many home alarm systems, which uses the car’s external cameras to detect potential threats,’ the car company explains.
‘If a minimal threat is detected, such as someone leaning on a car, Sentry Mode switches to an “Alert” state and displays a message on the touchscreen warning that its cameras are recording. If a more severe threat is detected, such as someone breaking a window, Sentry Mode switches to an “Alarm” state, which activates the car alarm, increases the brightness of the center display, and plays music at maximum volume from the car’s audio system.’
‘If a car switches to “Alarm” state, owners will also receive an alert from their Tesla mobile app notifying them that an incident has occurred. They’ll be able to download a video recording of an incident (which begins 10 minutes prior to the time a threat was detected) by inserting a formatted USB drive into their car before they enable Sentry Mode.’
This particular incident happened in Sacramento, California and, as yet, the two men have not been found.
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